


Blue Star

by keepfabandgayon



Series: Blue [1]
Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: Canonical Character Death, M/M, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-16
Updated: 2013-12-16
Packaged: 2018-01-04 19:24:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1084806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keepfabandgayon/pseuds/keepfabandgayon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You take your time, because he deserves it."</p><p>Kaworu lived many lives, but never so many for one person.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blue Star

**Author's Note:**

> One day, I was just going to write a paragraph that was floating around in my head, so I could remember it for later. Instead I wrote this whole thing. 
> 
> I'll be honest, I'm not entirely sure what point I intended to get across while writing this. Mostly I just wanted them to be happy for five damn seconds. I hope someone enjoys it. 
> 
> Most of the characters are in here at some point, mostly just mentioned in passing.

You take your time, because he deserves it. 

The first time you meet him, oh, it is surely your least favourite. You don’t like to think about it. You don’t think about it, because you didn’t know you loved him when it started, and you didn’t understand what love was, and you didn’t know how to make him happy. Really, you didn’t know much of anything. Not at first. 

You used to think you were so enlightened, having lived so many lives, but you had lived them so detached. You cared about people, every once in a while, but overall you saw their lives as fleeting, and yourself as the all-seeing, all-knowing voice of reason. 

You were an Angel, after all. 

But you were wrong, and you had to find this boy to learn it. You had to love this boy. You had to learn that minimising pain was not the same as creating happiness. 

So you think about it, because despite how squarely you’d ruined everything between you and him that first time, it was when you first fell in love with him. And you think about it, because it was the first time you kissed him. 

You rushed him then. But you learned fast. 

The second time, you were kinder, gentler, softer, because you loved him. And he loved you so quickly -- _too_ quickly, and so you thought it was too soon, and you told him you didn’t love him. You lied to him. 

You _lied_ to him. 

You saw the pain in his eyes, and it nearly killed you. That was the moment you decided your purpose, for all the rest of your infinite lives, was to make him happy, even if only for a moment. Because you’d seen him smile, and you needed to see that smile again, as many times as you could. 

\---

You’d lived many lives before you met him, and you’d never fixated on someone like this before. There were a few people who you’d followed for a time. 

Once there was a woman who had been your mother in one life, and you’d asked for a life in which you could be around her for the next three turns. Usually your parents were distant, but she raised you with love. You were grateful to her, and she was kind to you every time. 

But you moved on. 

There had been a man you’d met in passing, millions of lives ago, when you’d landed yourself in the very early parts of Lilin civilisation. He was a gardener. He grew crops for life, but he grew flowers for his own enjoyment. You liked his flowers, and you liked him. You lived with him for six lives. You blessed his garden for six lives. 

But you moved on. 

There were the triplets, the ones who had looked up to you as their leader, though your body in that life had been younger than theirs. You tried to save them three times. Each time, you watched them die, one by one -- of starvation, or of illness, or in a fight...

You decided there was nothing you could do for them, and you moved on. 

There were countless others -- few to you, but thousands in all -- who you’d liked enough to stay with through more than one life. 

This boy, though; you know you will never tire of him. You know you love him, and you will forever. You want to make him happy in as many lives as you can. 

Even if you have to leave him. 

Even if you have to die for him. 

Even if you have to ask him to kill you. 

He will experience pain in every life. So much pain, with or without you there. 

And he will experience happiness, but it won’t be much. Not as much as he deserves. 

One more drop in the bucket for his pain; but the happiness you could bring him, compared to what he had… that is a whole new ocean. 

He tells you that, once, in another life; he says that no matter what happens, he will always cherish the happiness you’d brought him. 

When he finds out what you are, he smiles at you and says he doesn’t care. 

\---

There are many lives that pass before you kiss him again. It feels right. The time, the place… 

And he kisses you back. 

You think your heart might burst. 

And once again, for the third time, you find yourself crushed in his hands. 

\---

The space between lives is cold and dark and empty. 

You don’t get to see Heaven or Hell. You are Free Will. You are the defining characteristic of Lilin. Therefore, you live as one of them, but many times over. 

You think it’s because SEELE knows they can’t control you. 

In that space, there is only you. You sometimes think about what it would be like to have this place full of souls, of every soul that ever was and ever would be. To hear them, to feel them, all of them, all of the time. 

You think about what it would be like to be one with him, in this place; to fill it with every colour, together. To hold his soul in yours. 

You will always save the Lilin, because it is your choice. But you can’t stop that pull, that _wonder_. 

\---

The next world is new. 

There is no war, and there are no Angels to kill. You are the only one. 

It feels like the lives you’d lived before him. The lives where the world hadn’t been ending, and you hadn’t felt the pull of Adam and Lilith calling you towards the apocalypse. That’s why you wanted this world; you wanted to know if Shinji could love you even when he didn’t need you. 

When you meet him, he is older than he’d been all the other lives. He is a college student, and you sit under a tree on the lawn, in the spot you always wandered off to ever since the first time you ran away from home in this life. 

In another life, this spot would stand over the centre of the Geofront, and the heart of NERV. You will always remember this place. You’ve been pulled here enough times. 

You are running your hands over the scars on your arms, the ones you make in every life to remind yourself that you are Lilin, because you can bleed, and that you are Angel, because you can heal so quickly; Angel, because you live again every time you die, and Lilin, because you can choose to die and you can choose how. 

Sometimes you think you are more Lilin than Angel. Is that possible? Can you be both? Can you truly be anything but Angel, at your very core?

He steps under your tree and starts to ask if you are a student, and he stops when he sees your scars. You look into his eyes, and he stops breathing. 

You didn’t think you’d find him in this life. You thought you’d taken too long to choose how you wanted this world, or that they wouldn’t let you have this much of what you asked for. But here he is. 

You look at him with wonder and deep affection and you want to throw your scarred arms around him and weep. But you don’t. You just look into his eyes and you smile. 

His eyes go wide, and then he smiles back. 

You didn’t think it’d be so _easy_. 

He is still the son of the same terrible father, and of the same late mother. His mother died of illness; his father had left him with his aunt and uncle and never came to see him again. 

He’d been sad. So sad. And his soul is broken as always. But here, it can be mended. You can mend it. 

Before this life, you’d never seen him older than fourteen, because you’d never seen him in a world where he didn’t pilot an Eva. He is as beautiful as ever, here, especially when he looks at you like that, smiles at you like that. 

You aren’t a student, but you know the college well, as you’d lived in the town all of this life, and you point him in the right direction. 

And you sit in that spot under the tree for three hours, until he comes out of class. Toji and Kensuke are with him. 

He spots you, and he waves at you, and you stand and smile back and gesture for him to join you. He leaves his friends and comes to you. You ask him if he wants to get lunch with you, and he shyly says he will join you. 

You take your time, because he deserves it. 

The two of you take your lunches under the tree every day when it’s sunny and warm, and you find a spot inside for when it isn’t. He doesn’t bring his friends; he tells you he shares the rest of his meals with them, so you don’t worry that he’s alone. 

At first he seems uncomfortable; he looks around constantly, and turns red when he sees someone looking at the two of you. 

One day, he’s staring down at his lunch, avoiding eye contact with everyone, even you. You reach out to take his chin in your hand, but think better of it and tap him on the cheek, almost a poke. 

“You don’t need to be ashamed, Shinji-kun. They’re looking at us because they’re happy for us.” You hesitate, just for a moment, and then continue, “They know how much I love you.”

He looks up at you, wide-eyed, and slowly he smiles. 

Then you do take his chin in your hand, and he closes his eyes, and you kiss him, gently, so gently, out under your tree in the bright early-afternoon light in spring. 

You laugh to yourself every time you realise that you are _courting him_ , in the way you did so many times with so many Lilin, because they were interesting, but they were never as important to you as he is. 

After this, he begins to bring his friends to lunch. At first, Toji and Kensuke make fun of him, saying things like “I should have known you liked men!” But it doesn’t last; they’re happy for Shinji, and they seem to like you well enough. Asuka smacking them both may have also had something to do with it. 

Instead of sitting opposite you, he now sits next to you, and when you both finish eating he will lean against you and let you put your arm around him. At this, Asuka looks away and makes gagging noises. 

When he invites you to his room for the first time, it is because you were caught in sudden heavy rain as the two of you walked around campus after lunch, and his dorm was nearby. He starts to strip off his wet layers and go through his drawers, and tells you that he’s not sure if his clothes will fit you but at least they will be dry. 

You pause midway through unbuttoning your shirt, and you look at him. 

“Shinji…”

He bites his lip, then smiles and closes the drawer. “Or, we could just wait for our wet clothes to dry…” He looks at you, and there is heat in his dark blue eyes. 

You think of stars, and how the hottest, brightest ones are blue, but the red ones live the longest. And yet, the blue stars are so huge, while the red ones are often not even seen, as they are so tiny. 

While you know that you will live a million lifetimes, with the memories of each one building on top of each other, you intend to live each one by his side. Because in your eyes, he is everything. His smile _consumes_ you, and it makes you feel so Human. 

You will live for him. 

And he is warm, so warm, and he makes you _burn_ when he touches you. 

When you make love to him, you think of the space between lives, and you think that if you could just have _this_ every time, if you could join with him in the physical world and feel so fulfilled, you might never have the ache again. You might never feel the Pull of Adam and Lilith. That destiny, in the worlds the Angels try to destroy, will never plague you again. 

He cries after, because he never thought someone could love him like you do. 

“I think I was born to meet you.” You’ve said it before, but he doesn’t know that. 

You invite him to live in your apartment the next year, and he agrees. You think you could call what you are “boyfriends” but you’ve never said the word. Neither does he. 

When he graduates, his father is not there, but you are. You run up to each other as soon as you can, and you lift him in the air, and you kiss him.

He asks you to marry him. You don’t have time to wonder if he is being serious; you’re not sure he even knows. You just say yes. 

Your rings have wings engraved into them. You say it is because he is your angel. 

“No, Kaworu, you’re mine.”

You can’t argue with him. 

He is a nurse, and you write books. He meets Rei in the hospital; she is a nurse as well. Asuka comes in frequently to harass her wife, a neurologist who calls her “Princess” and thinks you’re very strange. 

She’s right, but of course you don’t tell her that. 

One year, for your birthday, he gets you a telescope -- a very nice one, and it looks expensive, and you’re not sure how long he has been saving for this -- and he asks you to teach him about the stars. 

You grow old together, and you wonder if you will die a natural death. You’ve never done that before. 

He holds your hand as your body wears down -- you never do seem to outlive him. 

You haven’t thought about the other Angels in a long time, but you see the faint lines where your old scars still remain, permanently etched into your wrinkled skin, and you wonder why you’re not healing. You wonder why your heart is failing when you do not tell it to. 

He is crying. You hold up a hand to his cheek, and for an instant you’re grateful this isn’t the other way around. You don’t think you could handle watching his life pass away. 

“Don’t cry, Shinji. I’ve lived a good life. I think I’ve made you happy--”

“You have.”

“Then smile. Please. If I am to die, I want the last thing I see to be proof that I made your life a happy one.”

He manages to smile through his tears. “I love you, Kaworu.”

“And I love you, Shinji.” 

Those are your last words in this life. 

\---

The space between lives is wrong. 

It is red, red like Human blood -- Lilin blood. Red like your eyes, and like the tiny stars that you could barely see. 

It is still cold, and still quiet, but it is wrong. 

Your soul shivers. 

You can feel them watching you -- SEELE, the Angels. They want you to feel wrong. But you don’t. You have fallen in love, and there is nothing wrong with that. 

_Fallen in love? Fallen? Fine. Then go ahead and Fall._

\---

You start to feel the wrongness in this life. It bleeds in through the cracks made by the Pull, and when you meet Shinji again, you don’t know what to do.

You’re used to a lifetime of loving him, and you don’t know how to start again. 

And that terrifies you. 

You’ve lived so many lives that even the thousand you’ve spent with Shinji should feel like nothing to you, but he is everything. And this past life has become comfortable to you. You hadn’t even felt like an Angel. 

Now you are once again acutely aware of how inhuman you are, and you hate it. 

You try to be close to him. You know you can’t rush him, so you don’t kiss him, even though you want to, but the way you speak to him is indicative of the lifetime you’ve just spent together. You ask him to sleep with you. You bathe with him, and you tell him you love him as you stand naked next to him. 

You know these are poor choices, but this whole world feels wrong, and you are desperate. 

This is the shortest time you get to spend with him, and isn’t it just poetic that it directly follows the longest? You see the light in his eyes that spells out love, but only twice. You barely see him smile. 

And then, for the fourth time, you must ask him to kill you. 

He crushes you in his hands again, but this time, he holds you for a while, battling his own mind. The fingers of Eva-01 shake and loosen, and just when you think he is going to let you go, he whispers “I love you,” and then everything goes dark. 

You don’t go to the space between worlds. Not right away. You awake almost instantly to the feel of the Pull, and your mind is flooded with images of Shinji starting Third Impact, of Lilith, in Rei’s form, talking to Shinji. 

You know what Shinji’s choice must be, so you help him get there. 

You show yourself through Lilith’s malleable body, moulding her into your form, but your soul is within Eva-01’s entry plug, invisible, and with your hands on Shinji’s face. He doesn’t see or feel your soul, but he sees the face you’ve given him through Lilith and he hears your voice and he smiles. He’s shaking, desperate, and more than a little deranged, but he’s happy to see you, so you soak up that smile. 

This is proof that, despite all the pain you caused him, he still loves you. 

\---

The space between lives is _angry_. 

It flashes red-and-white, and it sears your soul, and it attacks your thoughts. 

You beg for it to let you go on. 

\---

You feel the Pull here, but it is different. You have a different purpose. 

You don’t understand it. Why is this time different?

You spend twenty-eight years wondering this. 

You meet him and he looks like he did when he was fourteen. He’s an Eva pilot, so he should look this young, but you suspect this time it’s because of the fourteen years he’s been completely gone from this world. 

You look fourteen too, but that is because it is your choice. 

“Welcome back, Ikari Shinji-kun. I’ve been waiting for you.”

There is a tree growing in NERV, directly under the one that you once spent many afternoons falling in love with him once again. There is a piano there, and you wonder why, but you sit at the bench and begin to play. 

You remember the first life, and all the ones after that when you played for him. 

He walks by, and you look at him, and he is still your everything. Your blue star. 

You teach him to play piano, because he doesn’t have his cello anymore. You touch his hands, lean against his back, whisper in his ear. This isn’t courting; this is _seduction_. 

This is new. 

You don’t try to hide that you are different from him. You know he suspects you are an Angel almost from the start. But he still falls in love with you. 

You don’t lie to him. You tell him the truth, even when you don’t want to, even when you know it will hurt him. Lying to him has never brought anything good. 

You want him to believe he can fix what he’s destroyed, because _you_ believe it. 

“I am always thinking of you.”

When you take the choker from him, you want to throw it away, smash it to pieces on the ground, take him in your arms and protect the two of you with your AT Field from the blast you know will come. But somehow, you know you can’t. 

Your AT Field is barely more than that of a Lilin now. 

So you put the choker around your own neck and force yourself to smile. It feels like a noose, and of course it does, because really, isn’t that what it is? Or is it the blade, waiting to drop?

It doesn’t matter. You don’t intend to let it kill you. 

\---

You don’t intend to, but suddenly you realise it will. 

The Pull is back in full force. It is only the fact that you have spent so many billions of lifetimes with a firm grasp on your Free Will that you manage to get any words out, to try and warn him, but you have to fight the anger of all the Angels. You can’t move, you can barely speak, and what little you can get out is not enough to stop him. 

“I’m sorry. This isn’t the happiness you hoped for.”

He can’t touch you. He presses himself up against the wall of his entry plug, desperate to be close to you. You smile at him, but it doesn’t reach your eyes. 

“We’ll surely meet again, Shinji-kun.”

You’ve never told him that before. You’ve never been able to promise him that. But you still have your Will, and you will come back to him somehow. 

\---

There is no space between lives this time. You have already made your decision. 

You find yourself on the Moon, not as an infant as you usually begin, but in the body of your fourteen-year-old self. You still feel the shards that just killed you in the skin of your throat, though they’re gone now that you’ve been reborn. 

“This time, Shinji, I will make you happy.”

You feel no Pull. You have no control over your AT Field. You are still an Angel, but barely; only enough so that you can walk on the Moon and not need to breathe. You cut yourself open, and you bleed. You don’t heal like you once did; instead, you heal slowly, like a Lilin. 

Like a Human. 

You don’t have your AT Field, but you do have something you didn’t have before, because you chose it. You can travel in the blink of an eye. 

You plant a tree at the bottom of NERV, and later, after the ceiling caves in, you bring a piano down. You keep it tuned, polish the cover. 

You take Unit-06, because you can, and because you must. 

You don’t let yourself or Shinji know you’re here, because that is what you know must happen. You could choose to do otherwise, but you don’t. 

You wait. Someday you will make him happy again in this life. But you take your time, because he deserves it.

**Author's Note:**

> In case it wasn't obvious (and it probably wasn't) the timeline of loops was:
> 
> manga  
> 1st draft of episode 24  
> lots that I skipped that don't align with anything canon  
> 2nd draft of episode 24  
> end of the manga  
> anime  
> and rebuild x2


End file.
